How to Dress Like a Mom (Not a Regular Mom, a Cool Mom)

1) Choose your athleisure

Wearing athleisure does not mean you have given up; it means you are giving yourself Options. You know who has options? A cool mom. The option to do the first two and a half minutes of a Youtube workout, or to meet your friend for donuts. Either way, yoga pants have the stretch you need. Just don’t put on those pre-pregnancy jeans. Those jeans are dead to you.

2) Embrace all fifty shades of gray

Slate, pewter, ash, heather. As you online shop for that perfect drapey cardigan-y sweater, you’ll see that it comes in black, and it comes in white. You are on the fence. But wait, it comes in charcoal? SOLD.

3) Let those tops flow

A mom’s midsection is one of the hardest working parts out there. It used to be a home for children and now it’s expected to squeeze itself back into what now? A mom shudders at the thought.

4) Have a really good pair of legging capris

The Workhorse. You wear them to Target, you wear them to sleep. You wear them to school pickup and as soon as you get home from wearing whatever else you had to wear that was not legging capris. On one hand they are sort of high maintenance due to the amount of pet hair they attract. On the other hand they are sort of low maintenance due to the amount of husband attention they attract #marriagewin.

5) Apply dry shampoo

You’ll start to wonder if, like the chinchilla, you might never bathe in actual water again and dust is all you need to clean yourself. You’ll know you’re doing it right when your two-year-old sees a container of baby powder in someone’s bathroom and her first instinct is to dump it on her head.

6) Simplify your accessories

Hair tie on wrist. The end.

7) Have something on your head

8) Relegate all of your high heels to the back of your closet and never wear them again

Sad, truly. But wear those babies for more than five minutes and two things happen: 1) your ankles get confused and wobbly and sort of stop working and 2) you’re gonna start to lose friends in the preschool drop-off line. TOMS wedges might be the exception because: charitable.

9) Wear shirts with stripes on them

When not reaching for athleisure, stripes will be your friend. Stripes say, ‘I gave this outfit some thought.’ But not too much thought. Because most of your thoughts were sucked out of your brain when you were busy making a human with your body and then trying to feed a human with your body and now confronting society’s expectations that you meet their every waking need as they run around outside of your body. I’m sorry, what were we talking about? … stripes. You look good in them.

10) Look like a boss

You look amazing and exactly zero people have noticed that you’ve worn those same legging capris for the past four days (#versatile). The people who love you don’t care what you wear – and if we’re being honest, the only place you get really dressed up is for an outing with other moms, which is ironic because they completely understand the struggle to look nice. Were your own humans dressed at some point in the day? You win. Now let’s schedule that mom’s night so we can pretend to be fancy together. I’ll bring the dry shampoo.

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About Sara Rivera

Growing up in a military family, Sara spent her childhood in eight different states before marrying her college sweetheart and settling in Rochester in 2011. Before embarking on healthcare careers, she and her husband both earned degrees in music, which they now put to good use harmonizing Disney lullabies for their three girls, Isla, Lily, and Amelia. She is passionate about yoga and backyard chickens, and will drop everything for a ladies’ night. Amidst the happy chaos that comes with having three kids in four years, she can often be found babywearing the youngest with a glass of wine in one hand and an Ina Garten recipe on the stove. Read more from Sara on her blog Everyone Romaine Calm.